


I Want To Hold Your Hand

by Carbocat



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Early Season1, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Professional Hand-Holder: Leonard Snart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 12:12:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10437507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: “Still think it was a good idea to take a dart for a ‘good for nothing’ criminal, Raymond?”





	

“What is it, Raymond?”

“Important, very important,” was muttered over and over from the pile of limbs that Mick had disposed in a heap on the only decent bed in the medbay before being called away by Hunter and Sara for the mission they were trying to salvage. Leonard had slipped into the room after that.

It took effort but Ray managed to flip himself on his back, a hand pressed over his eyes like it’d stop the onset of nightmares, “Damn experimental drugs from the fifties.”

He was too busy to actually notice that Snart took another step forward, taking up residence in the chair near the bed, “Still think it was a good idea to take a dart for a ‘good for nothing’ criminal, Raymond?”

“You’re not good for nothing,” Ray bit out, pressing his fingers harder against his eyelids until it started to hurt. He thought he’d have more time than this, that he’d be able to mentally prepare himself for the hallucinations brought on by the drugs. “You’re worth something, Snart.”

“Thanks.”

“Meant it.”

Ray wanted to choose different words to make it sound better but he couldn’t find them at the moment, too busy swallowing the scream clawing up his throat – it wasn’t real. He told himself, muttering it over and over like a damn mantra under his breath that it wasn’t real.

Anna wasn’t there.

The walls had shifted and faded from sterile futuristic white to the dark, dirty, wet Sterling City alley, it wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. There were no Mirakuru soldiers, no snapped necks. The cries and begging wasn’t real, except when it was and it sounded so very much like his own voice. Except when he lost sight in what was real and not.

No, no, no, he reminded himself. Anna wasn’t telling him that she loved him for the last time as her neck was snapped even if the sound was as deafening to his ears as it was that night.

He didn’t have to save her, he already knew that he didn’t. No hallucination would be worse than that.

He flinched when Snart pulled his hand away from his face. He said nothing about the trimmer in his hand or the tears clinging to his eyelashes, only strapping restraints on his arms. The other victims had clawed their eyes out.

“Stein is creating an antidote as we speak,” Snart stated and then shook his head, “That was a dumb move, Raymond.”

“Heroic,” Ray bit out through his clenched teeth, blinking repeatedly in an attempt to shake away the vision of Anna and the bruises on her neck, her dead eyes, the blood on her lips. “Need to be a hero.”

“That kind of thinking will get you killed.”

Ray huffed a laugh that sounded more like a painful couch and flinched hard away from something that wasn’t there, “Or just drugged.”

Leonard could appreciate when someone was trying to make a joke in a bad situation and deadpanned, “Or that.”

“I have to be a hero,” Ray muttered. He wasn’t speaking to Leonard, he realized, because Ray was looking somewhere off to their right. “I’m sorry, I – I have to make up for…I’m trying, Annie-“

Leonard snapped his fingers in front of Ray’s face, ignoring the hard flinch and the gasp. She wasn’t there.

It felt real. It wasn’t.

Damn drugs.

“What was so important, Raymond?”

“Oh, uh, important question,” Ray muttered, his eyes drifting to Leonard’s but he wasn’t quite sure if he was looking at him or passed him. “Very important. Very, very important. I have a badge in hand holding.”

“That is not a question.”

“I’m good at it, I can show you,” Ray said. “Just – just put your hand in mine.”

 

“Don’t.”

It was a warning and a threat all at once. His gun was still strapped to his leg and he was not above freezing the good doctor from the inside out to knock that smirk off his face.

Stein held his hands up in surrender but he was eying Ray’s almost painful grip on Snart’s hand with interest, “I didn’t say anything.”

“Your thoughts are tangible,” He replied. “And irritating.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Snart.”

It was sarcastic and something that Leonard might have been able to appreciate if he hadn’t lost the feeling in most of his fingers on his left hand. Ray had twitched, flinched, gasped at nothing, begged pathetically, and squeezed his hand so tight that he could feel the bones grind together. He wasn’t in the mood, “Have you found the antidote?”

“Well…” Stein trailed off because Ray had gasped, his eyes flying open for the first time in an hour. Stein jumped back, startled.

Ray shook his head violently like he had been slapped and struggled against the restraints, his fingernails digging into Leonard’s hand. He started up the mantra that had long since stopped mattering to either of them, “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. She’s not there.”

“Raymond,” Leonard called warningly when he started muttering about Damien Darhk and being held captive. He didn’t speak again until Ray’s eyes drifted over to him, “Stein is here.”

“The antidote?”

Stein looked uneasy, “Well, actually-“

Ray’s eyes were fixed onto Leonard’s with an intensity that had not been there before when he stated with complete sincerity in his voice, “The cockroaches accepted me as one of their own when they stopped trying to eat me. It wasn’t all bad.”

“Oh dear, he’s delirious.”

Leonard rolled his eyes at the doctor and then at Raymond, himself. Having heard about his fiancée, being shot in the chest with an arrow, dying but not actually dying, Snart had no doubt that what he said was true, “Give him the antidote, Stein.”

“There’s a problem with that.”

Snart glared, “And that is?”

“Reverse engineering what is essentially a fear-inducing hallucinogenic is not as simple as you seem to think, Mr. Snart,” Stein sneered. “I had to heat it to a high degree and-“

Leonard tosses his gun to the doctor in an awkward one handed throw, “Hurry up.”

“I am working as quick as I can, Dr. Palmer,” Stein stated before turning to make his leave.

When he was at the door, Snart stopped him, “Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“Have Mick use the gun.”

 

The antidote had worked, thankfully.

Well, they thought it was working.

Stein had huffed and puffed that if they wanted something better than he should have had more than three hours to design it. Be thankful that it didn’t immediately kill Raymond.

Leonard was sure that Raymond would happily announce that he was thrilled and honored to be the guinea pig to Stein’s mad scientist even if he was still fighting off invisible insects or alien salt shakers. But alas, he had passed out almost immediately after having the antidote injected into his arm.

His blood pressure had dropped down to something normal, his heart rate slowed. He seemed more like he was knocked out cold rather than having nightmares behind his eyes. They assumed that it worked.

“When is he going to wake up?” Snart asked, trying and failing to shake free of the deathgrip on his hand.

Stein shrugged, “How should I know?”

He scurried away soon after, something about Mr. Jefferson and the mission, leaving Leonard alone with a sleeping Ray Palmer. He sunk down in his chair, at least he didn’t snore. Mick snored.

When Leonard woke up, it was to a camera flash and a giggle. His eyes snapped open and his neck ached from slouching over to rest his head on the bed, but what really annoyed him was the Sara in the room.

“What are you-“

“How’s the patient, Nurse Nightingale?” She asked, snapping another picture. There was a bruise blossoming across her check when she noticed him looking at it, she rolled her eyes and shrugged it off, “Some jackass got a lucky shot.”

“Nightingale?”

“Florence Nightingale, you know-“

“I know who she is,” He sighed, rubbing at his eyes. It was then that he noticed that Ray was still holding his hand and just how Sara interpreted that. “I’m not a nurse.”

“Professional Hand-Holder: Leonard Snart?”

“I wear a lot of hats,” was his reply but he did finally admit that he had stuck around because someone ought to have. “He took nightmare poison for me, we’re even now.”

“It was just to be even?”

“I don’t like being in people’s debt.”

“Didn’t Mick say the same thing after Russia?” She asked.

Leonard shrugged and smirked, “What can I say? We’re cut from the same cloth.”

“You know what I think?”

“I don’t really care-“

“I think that you like him,” She grinned, especially when he finally yanked his hand free of Ray’s impressively strong grip. “I think you like _all_ of us.”

“I would not go that far.”

“Face it, Snart, you’re becoming one of the team,” She laughed. “Rather you like it or not.”


End file.
